general conditions

concerts

madrid

2019-09-24 21:00

15.00 €

BLACK MIDI

What goes on within the walls of the BRIT School? It cannot be by chance: a school attended by the likes of Amy Winehouse, Adele, King Krule, Loyle Carner and Rex Orange County is not just any school. It just can’t be. The latest link in the apparently infinite chain of young talent to come out of that London performing arts school is called black midi.
Suddenly in these days of the selfie, a band; a band like the bands of yesteryear. Now that all the sounds in the world can be found on a mobile app, now that the new boy/girl bands only have one member, maybe the real transgression is these four kids carrying their guitars, bass and drum kit. Geordie Greep, Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin, Cameron Picton and Morgan Simpson became black midi after meeting in the classrooms of the BRIT School while studying music, but you could probably do what they do with practice but it is definitely outside the curriculum. The perfectly ordered chaos (or perfectly chaotic order, whatever) that is lurking in their recently released debut album, Schlagenheim, seems to come more out of intuition than out of tuition: that absolutely free bringing up to date of math rock seems to come naturally to them.What happens in the songs that make up Schlagenheim, is exactly what happens to any kid the same age as the members of black midi: they don’t really know what direction to go in nor what they want to be and that is precisely their greatest asset. They speed up, slow down, start moving forwards again; do a u-turn, leap; go one way… then change their minds and swerve the other way in a skid. It is not easy to keep up with them but it is worth trying: it always ends up being very exciting.

NICK MURPHY fka CHET FAKER

Chet Faker’s debut,Built on Glass(Future Classic, 2014), was built on glass to such a degree that it shattered. The Australian artist, who made a name for himself as a electronic soul troubadour with the much acclaimed EPThinking In Textures(Opulent, 2012), achieved what every new artist desires with his first album: superb reviews, immediate public affection and a world tour that took him to festivals like Primavera Sound, where in 2015 he gave one of the most memorable concerts of that year.But just one year later, Chet Faker, disappeared to make way forNick Murphy, the real name of the musician born in Melbourne 30 years ago. His first song freed up from his alter ego embodied the change: “You were scared to be yourself / For no reason”, he sang onFear Less. Free and unstoppable, Nick Murphy started the rediscovery with the EPMissing Link(Future Classic, 2017) on which he delves into the most oppressive, dance floor electronic beats.And from there to the recently announcedRun Fast Sleep Naked, his first full-length as Nick Murphy will conclude the transition on April 26th. In anticipation we haveSanity, a move towards the more organic and playful sounds of his beginnings, with a surreal video recorded in the Canary Islands. And we can also give the news thatNick Murphy will play on 4thOctober in Sala Riviera in Madrid and on 5th at Sala Apolo in Barcelonaas part of the world presentation tour of what will be his second album. It will be the first time that we will be able to see the artist formerly known as Chet Faker in Spanish venues. You got to know him as Chet Faker but you now you will remember him as Nick Murphy.Tickets on sale at the price of 25 € + distribution costs + 1 € donation toPLUS1, organization which has joined forces with Nick Murphy to donate this money to initiatives that fight for the dignity, equality and access for those who need it.

NICK MURPHY fka CHET FAKER

Chet Faker’s debut,Built on Glass(Future Classic, 2014), was built on glass to such a degree that it shattered. The Australian artist, who made a name for himself as a electronic soul troubadour with the much acclaimed EPThinking In Textures(Opulent, 2012), achieved what every new artist desires with his first album: superb reviews, immediate public affection and a world tour that took him to festivals like Primavera Sound, where in 2015 he gave one of the most memorable concerts of that year.But just one year later, Chet Faker, disappeared to make way forNick Murphy, the real name of the musician born in Melbourne 30 years ago. His first song freed up from his alter ego embodied the change: “You were scared to be yourself / For no reason”, he sang onFear Less. Free and unstoppable, Nick Murphy started the rediscovery with the EPMissing Link(Future Classic, 2017) on which he delves into the most oppressive, dance floor electronic beats.And from there to the recently announcedRun Fast Sleep Naked, his first full-length as Nick Murphy will conclude the transition on April 26th. In anticipation we haveSanity, a move towards the more organic and playful sounds of his beginnings, with a surreal video recorded in the Canary Islands. And we can also give the news thatNick Murphy will play on 4thOctober in Sala Riviera in Madrid and on 5th at Sala Apolo in Barcelonaas part of the world presentation tour of what will be his second album. It will be the first time that we will be able to see the artist formerly known as Chet Faker in Spanish venues. You got to know him as Chet Faker but you now you will remember him as Nick Murphy.Tickets on sale at the price of 25 € + distribution costs + 1 € donation toPLUS1, organization which has joined forces with Nick Murphy to donate this money to initiatives that fight for the dignity, equality and access for those who need it.

SLEEP

+Lucy in BlueAl Cisneros and Matt Pike had been making smoke signals from the stage for some time, but the appearance ofThe Sciencesone year ago now was an unexpected explosion for us all. Not only because the album wasn’t on anybody’s radar but also because it changed our perception ofSleep. Suddenly they weren’t only (insert inverted commas if applicable) a historic name to revere through head banging, but were now a rising creative force in the present, keen to add some new chapters to their already impressive curriculum. Truth is -today all stoner rock currents inevitably pass through Sleep.In fact this has been the case since when, in the early nineties, the band featured a self-portrait of Dalì melting on the cover of their debut of electronic narcosis. Also, it is said that Ozzy Osborne considered them to be the closest band to the original essence of Black Sabbath. But the praise was not enough to contain the ambitions of a band that wanted to make longer and more expansive tracks, inviting the listener to dive into a druggy, electrified spiral of sound. An ambition that eventually culminated in Dopesmoker, the most colossal doom metal joint ever rolled: an album of only one track of over an hour, considered unmarketable by their record label and not released in its original full glory until much later.The members of Sleep had to split and go their separate ways –Cisneros slowing down even more withOm; Pike blazing his way withHigh on Fire– to end up being considered the flag bearers of their genre. When the beast awoke again, in a new incarnation, which has welcomed Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder to its ranks, we were ready to give it the welcome it deserved, as was Jack White. He opened his house to them on Third Man Records to release their comeback album, and to record Live at Third Man Records, an album with no curfew, released as a quadruple vinyl. The quicklime contained in those grooves give an idea of the power that this trio will display in the Apolo on Friday 18th October, in what will be their first visit to the city since their memorable performance at Primavera Sound 2017.Iceland quartet Lucy in Blue will open the night with their progressive rock with psychedelic elements and existential depth. They have just released In Flight, their second album, with which they’ll plough through the Sala Apolo on 18th October.FRIDAY 18th OCTOBER - BARCELONA (SALA APOLO)

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

SOLD OUT!Of course not, no way: the seven-headed dragon hadn’t gone anywhere. ;He was just resting. Hidden away, pausing, catching his breath. After a Guinness-like-World-Record 2017 during which they released five albums (five? Five!), the hyperactive King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard had an unusually calm 2018. Twelve months with no sign of life. In their universe, one in which a year seems to last longer than it does for the rest of us mortals, this is an eternity. But that’s enough: they need some fuzz.As if they wanted to make up for lost time quickly, the Australians came back at the end of January with seven fabulous minutes of vocoderized electro-glam on Cyboogie, their comeback single, first release from the album that will come out in April (Fishing for Fishies) the latest piece to add to an almost infinite puzzle (this isn’t hyperbole: they have released over a dozen records since 2012) that goes way beyond revival for revivals sake. Although they have always had a foot in the sixties and seventies, Stu Mackenzie and his psycho-commune have managed to create their own personal sound that can easily be identified in younger bands. It is this role as musical influencers of this decade that has come into its own with Gizzfest, the festival that they have been organising in their native Melbourne since 2015.They do not forget their home when they are travelling around the world, now in hypnotic concentric circles, now in unstoppable motorik toing and froing during long XXL tours like the one that will bring them to Madrid and Barcelona in October. We will now be meeting them again, for the first time since their show at Primavera Sound 2017, with their two drum kits, those acid-spitting synths and those jams that you never want to end. And, knowing them as we already do, the question is not what will be find in Fishing for Fishies but rather how many albums they will have released by then.

CUCO

Ow! First there was the disappointment: “we regret that we are canceling our South American and European tour dates”. Then came the fright: “we appreciate the fans’ comprehension of the situation while the band members recover”. This was the succession of events when in October 2018 we found out that Cuco and his band would not perform later that year in Barcelona and Madrid after having had a road accident whilst touring in the United States.But all of that is history. Omar Banos, our friend Cuco, has turned the page and has even used the name of the painkiller he was taking after the accident as the title of one of his most recent singles, Hydrocodone. Also, in the video, we see him with a plaster cast up to his neck, totally immobilized on his bed. This is torture for somebody who has never stayed still, even talking metaphorically; since he was discovered through Internet a couple of years ago with Wannabewithyou, his first EP, and Lo que siento, the lo fi ballad which has since become an underground hit: he has gone from English to Spanish and from there to using both in one single chorus; from a collaboration with his peer Clairo to another with Dillon Francis; from asserting his Mexican roots to going rapper with that dozy flow of his that is now almost a registered trademark. And, finally, from the bedroom where he made his first tracks to the ranks of Interscope Records, the label that signed him in March. If that isn’t the post-millennial version of the American dream, tell us what is: a 20-year-old Chicano who makes low-cost songs in Spanglish who now shares record label with Lady Gaga and U2. Suck on that Trump!All this good news, however, does not cure Cuco’s chronic heartache, which pervades everything he composes, sings and, basically, lives. By relating how he has had his heart broken time and time again, until the patches on his heart are wearing patches he has stolen ours. What wasn’t to be in November 2018 will happen this October and with a new album in tow: Cuco has just announced that his debut, Para mí, will come out on 26th July.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

SOLD OUT!Of course not, no way: the seven-headed dragon hadn’t gone anywhere. ;He was just resting. Hidden away, pausing, catching his breath. After a Guinness-like-World-Record 2017 during which they released five albums (five? Five!), the hyperactive King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard had an unusually calm 2018. Twelve months with no sign of life. In their universe, one in which a year seems to last longer than it does for the rest of us mortals, this is an eternity. But that’s enough: they need some fuzz.As if they wanted to make up for lost time quickly, the Australians came back at the end of January with seven fabulous minutes of vocoderized electro-glam on Cyboogie, their comeback single, first release from the album that will come out in April (Fishing for Fishies) the latest piece to add to an almost infinite puzzle (this isn’t hyperbole: they have released over a dozen records since 2012) that goes way beyond revival for revivals sake. Although they have always had a foot in the sixties and seventies, Stu Mackenzie and his psycho-commune have managed to create their own personal sound that can easily be identified in younger bands. It is this role as musical influencers of this decade that has come into its own with Gizzfest, the festival that they have been organising in their native Melbourne since 2015.They do not forget their home when they are travelling around the world, now in hypnotic concentric circles, now in unstoppable motorik toing and froing during long XXL tours like the one that will bring them to Madrid and Barcelona in October. We will now be meeting them again, for the first time since their show at Primavera Sound 2017, with their two drum kits, those acid-spitting synths and those jams that you never want to end. And, knowing them as we already do, the question is not what will be find in Fishing for Fishies but rather how many albums they will have released by then.

CUCO

Ow! First there was the disappointment: “we regret that we are canceling our South American and European tour dates”. Then came the fright: “we appreciate the fans’ comprehension of the situation while the band members recover”. This was the succession of events when in October 2018 we found out that Cuco and his band would not perform later that year in Barcelona and Madrid after having had a road accident whilst touring in the United States.But all of that is history. Omar Banos, our friend Cuco, has turned the page and has even used the name of the painkiller he was taking after the accident as the title of one of his most recent singles, Hydrocodone. Also, in the video, we see him with a plaster cast up to his neck, totally immobilized on his bed. This is torture for somebody who has never stayed still, even talking metaphorically; since he was discovered through Internet a couple of years ago with Wannabewithyou, his first EP, and Lo que siento, the lo fi ballad which has since become an underground hit: he has gone from English to Spanish and from there to using both in one single chorus; from a collaboration with his peer Clairo to another with Dillon Francis; from asserting his Mexican roots to going rapper with that dozy flow of his that is now almost a registered trademark. And, finally, from the bedroom where he made his first tracks to the ranks of Interscope Records, the label that signed him in March. If that isn’t the post-millennial version of the American dream, tell us what is: a 20-year-old Chicano who makes low-cost songs in Spanglish who now shares record label with Lady Gaga and U2. Suck on that Trump!All this good news, however, does not cure Cuco’s chronic heartache, which pervades everything he composes, sings and, basically, lives. By relating how he has had his heart broken time and time again, until the patches on his heart are wearing patches he has stolen ours. What wasn’t to be in November 2018 will happen this October and with a new album in tow: Cuco has just announced that his debut, Para mí, will come out on 26th July.

PRIESTS

What’s up with Kansas? The second album by the American trioPriestsis calledThe Seduction of Kansasbecause political science says that it is the state that usually anticipates the political direction that the United States is going to take. Because, it is worth acknowledging, that the USA is in reality that country that lies between two coasts and four time zones. And who knows if Priests are the band that will tip the scales towards the next punk, post-punk or… whatever revival.For now the band formed by Katie Alice Greer, Daniele Daniele and G.L. Jaguar presents its candidacy with a second album produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen) that goes even deeper into their critical and at times inflammatory vision of North American society. After the reorganisation of the formation after the departure of their bass player Taylor Mulitz, the new Priests are more versatile, more atmospheric and, why not, more perverse. Once again released on their own label, Sister Polygon –on which they have also published Downtown Boys, Snail Mail and Sneaks–,The Seduction of Kansaspicks up and extends the gauntlet thrown down by their acclaimed 2017 debut, with which they burst onto the scene bringing a transfusion of fresh blood that was much needed by punk.After the widely talked about presentation of that debut at Primavera Sound 2017,Priestswill show off their new skin at Sidecar in Barcelona on 29th October (at a concert organised in collaboration with the promoter Xtrarradio) and at Fun House in Madrid on 30th October (as an integral part of the SON Estrella Galicia cycle).

CUPIDO

Cupido don’t have many, I won’t lie: only eight songs, those onPréstame un sentimiento. Nothing else. But don’t pay attention to what I tell you, or what anybody tells you because on the only album that this atypical boy band has produced to date there are more winning choruses than in many XXL discographies. And here come good news: you can sing them all in this show announced as the last one of the tour.

CIGARETTES AFTER SEX

It is so good being totally miserable and having the company of the whisper of Greg Gonzalez and hisCigarettes After Sexto feel really lonely. To have him sing in undertones that“nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby”and feeling, deep down, that you want it to happen again to go back to his beautiful tissue-songs, to those hypnotic and visceral sound oases of whispered pop that accompanies you. So that the wheel of life, love, and music by Cigarettes After Sex, starts turning once again.Every new action by the band must be embraced wholehearted. It happened with their first release,EP I, released in 2012 and after which Cigarettes After Sex maintained almost total silence until 2017, when their first album came out. Since then the fascination with Greg Gonzalez materialised thanks to his two consecutive visits to Primavera Sound (in 2017 and 2018). After 2018 when they dropped singles intermittently we now have the opportunity to meet with them again:it will be on two successive nights in the sala Apolo on 11th and 12th November, after having played at the first edition of Primavera Weekender in Benidorm. Don’t miss these opportunities, because you never know when they will come round again.

CIGARETTES AFTER SEX

It is so good being totally miserable and having the company of the whisper of Greg Gonzalez and hisCigarettes After Sexto feel really lonely. To have him sing in undertones that“nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby”and feeling, deep down, that you want it to happen again to go back to his beautiful tissue-songs, to those hypnotic and visceral sound oases of whispered pop that accompanies you. So that the wheel of life, love, and music by Cigarettes After Sex, starts turning once again.Every new action by the band must be embraced wholehearted. It happened with their first release,EP I, released in 2012 and after which Cigarettes After Sex maintained almost total silence until 2017, when their first album came out. Since then the fascination with Greg Gonzalez materialised thanks to his two consecutive visits to Primavera Sound (in 2017 and 2018). After 2018 when they dropped singles intermittently we now have the opportunity to meet with them again:it will be on two successive nights in the sala Apolo on 11th and 12th November, after having played at the first edition of Primavera Weekender in Benidorm. Don’t miss these opportunities, because you never know when they will come round again.

HELADO NEGRO

Roberto Carlos Lange, born to Ecuadorian immigrants in Florida and based in Brooklyn, he has been signing his music with the alias Helado Negro for a decade now. Sometimes he sings it in Spanish and at others in English. He calls it “psychedelic meneíto”. Most of it, since he debuted with Awe Owe in 2009, has been released on Sufjan Steven’s label, another musician who has a special ability to make us evoke things that in fact have never happened to us. Next time we will talk about the things that will never happen: like the release of any records better than This is How You Smile this year.

HELADO NEGRO

Roberto Carlos Lange, born to Ecuadorian immigrants in Florida and based in Brooklyn, he has been signing his music with the alias Helado Negro for a decade now. Sometimes he sings it in Spanish and at others in English. He calls it “psychedelic meneíto”. Most of it, since he debuted with Awe Owe in 2009, has been released on Sufjan Steven’s label, another musician who has a special ability to make us evoke things that in fact have never happened to us. Next time we will talk about the things that will never happen: like the release of any records better than This is How You Smile this year.

LOYLE CARNER

Liverpool and Tottenham had hardly been playing the Champion League final for five minutes when Loyle Carner came out on stage at the latest edition of Primavera Sound wearing a vintage Liverpool shirt. By the end of the night the English rapper was on the winning side, although he knows perfectly well that, sometimes, you don’t have to be first to win: his first album, Yesterday’s Gone (2016), didn’t get either the Mercury Prize nor the Brit Award it was nominated for. He didn’t need to. Who says that nobody remembers the runners up? Loyle bursts out laughing when he hears that.In truth, he laughs about lots of things. The man is content; he looks happy, lives peacefully. He has everything that he wants. Gold chains, litres of Dom Pérignon, a swimming pool with a mosaic of his face on the bottom? No, absolutely not: Loyle is a rapper but not that type of rapper. His life, which he delivers sometimes bound up with jazz and occasionally bound with accelerated funk and white glove hip hop, is decorating his new house with the girl he loves, walking his dog whilst mulling over a lyric that he can’t quite get right, eating Sunday lunch with his cool mum that we met on his video for You Don’t Know. You can’t ask for more. Well, you can: two equally brilliant rap records. He has those too. And at just 24 years old he has already done tracks with Jorja Smith, Sampha and Kate Tempest.The second album, the recent Not Waving, But Drowning, reinforces his position in the front line of the rap resistance in times of trap. He does not seem worried about tendencies because what he does, telling stories, will never go out of fashion. Especially with a good narrator: it is a pleasure to listen to him, whatever he says. Keep talking, Loyle, we will listen for as long as you want.

LOYLE CARNER

Liverpool and Tottenham had hardly been playing the Champion League final for five minutes when Loyle Carner came out on stage at the latest edition of Primavera Sound wearing a vintage Liverpool shirt. By the end of the night the English rapper was on the winning side, although he knows perfectly well that, sometimes, you don’t have to be first to win: his first album, Yesterday’s Gone (2016), didn’t get either the Mercury Prize nor the Brit Award it was nominated for. He didn’t need to. Who says that nobody remembers the runners up? Loyle bursts out laughing when he hears that.In truth, he laughs about lots of things. The man is content; he looks happy, lives peacefully. He has everything that he wants. Gold chains, litres of Dom Pérignon, a swimming pool with a mosaic of his face on the bottom? No, absolutely not: Loyle is a rapper but not that type of rapper. His life, which he delivers sometimes bound up with jazz and occasionally bound with accelerated funk and white glove hip hop, is decorating his new house with the girl he loves, walking his dog whilst mulling over a lyric that he can’t quite get right, eating Sunday lunch with his cool mum that we met on his video for You Don’t Know. You can’t ask for more. Well, you can: two equally brilliant rap records. He has those too. And at just 24 years old he has already done tracks with Jorja Smith, Sampha and Kate Tempest.The second album, the recent Not Waving, But Drowning, reinforces his position in the front line of the rap resistance in times of trap. He does not seem worried about tendencies because what he does, telling stories, will never go out of fashion. Especially with a good narrator: it is a pleasure to listen to him, whatever he says. Keep talking, Loyle, we will listen for as long as you want.

!!! Wallop Tour

In 1997, nobody was even remotely worried about the ranking of his or her person or business on Google, but it already seemed like a rather kamikaze idea. “Why don’t we call ourselves !!!?”. “You wouldn’t dare!”. They dared. And given what we have seen, finally it wasn’t such a bad idea to name your band with three exclamation marks. The weird thing is that nobody had thought of it before.Almost twenty years after the arrival of the Californian band’s first album, everyone now verbalises their cryptic naming as they see fit, but everyone knows who we are talking about. They, that gif on legs that is Nic Offer and his followers, advised us, at that time, to pronounce it like a quick clicking of the tongue (“chk chk chk”), but after any one of their concerts they have been called all sorts: “The mother of all parties”, “absolute madness”, “unbelievably funky””.In reality, !!! transcend their name to be danced to only. Non-stop: their groove is infinite. They could have used up all their rowdy reserves at that almost mythical show at Primavera Sound 2004 when Nic Offer ended up puking from so much grooving, but later came several more albums, their corresponding tours and more festivals to help to blur the frontier between club music and punk guitars. It is no small achievement although nowadays it seems to be: their explosion onto the scene at the turn of the century was really quite revolutionary. They have been fun, yes, but they have also been important. And still to be conjugated in the present. They are fun and they are important.

RIDE

And then, comes one of those days when you wake up pop, thirsting for the fresh guitars of the day and hungry for fantasy choruses. So you decide that if those bands that started their career 30 years ago are still making music it means that they are still an integral part of today’s music and you put on Future Love, Ride’s 2019 single. Oh surprise: that track for which Real Estate and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever would kill for does not only completely satisfy your indie pop urges, but also takes you from flashback to flashback all day long through the discography of the Oxford band. It is impossible that such a perfect song like Future Love could come from a band without experience. And how!If in musical dictionaries there is a photo of Mark Gardener and Andy Bell next to the entry shoegaze (there isn’t but you know what we mean) it is because the first EPs by the band, their 1990 debut Nowhere and its follow-up Going Blank Again in 1992 are quintessential of the genre. It contained everything that everybody else copied: the waves of distortion, the stifled voices representing stifled feelings, the otherworldly harmonies… That is why Ride is more a model than a band. Even when they themselves have broken the mould (which they did early on: in 1994 with Carnival of Light when they went against party discipline embraced sixties psychedelia) they are still a language in their own right. The stylish, dreamy and noisy indie pop sounds like Ride even when they welcomed interference from the likes of DJ Erol Alkan producing their comeback album Weather Diaries.Ride, the band of the 2015 giant banner, the band of the Heineken Hidden Stage in 2018, will be back to articulate their language in the present tense through Primavera Sound channels during the presentation tour of their recently announced new album, This Is Not a Safe Place, that will come out on August 16th and will once again be produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder. Essential pieces of this pop dream from which we don’t want to wake up.

RIDE

And then, comes one of those days when you wake up pop, thirsting for the fresh guitars of the day and hungry for fantasy choruses. So you decide that if those bands that started their career 30 years ago are still making music it means that they are still an integral part of today’s music and you put on Future Love, Ride’s 2019 single. Oh surprise: that track for which Real Estate and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever would kill for does not only completely satisfy your indie pop urges, but also takes you from flashback to flashback all day long through the discography of the Oxford band. It is impossible that such a perfect song like Future Love could come from a band without experience. And how!If in musical dictionaries there is a photo of Mark Gardener and Andy Bell next to the entry shoegaze (there isn’t but you know what we mean) it is because the first EPs by the band, their 1990 debut Nowhere and its follow-up Going Blank Again in 1992 are quintessential of the genre. It contained everything that everybody else copied: the waves of distortion, the stifled voices representing stifled feelings, the otherworldly harmonies… That is why Ride is more a model than a band. Even when they themselves have broken the mould (which they did early on: in 1994 with Carnival of Light when they went against party discipline embraced sixties psychedelia) they are still a language in their own right. The stylish, dreamy and noisy indie pop sounds like Ride even when they welcomed interference from the likes of DJ Erol Alkan producing their comeback album Weather Diaries.Ride, the band of the 2015 giant banner, the band of the Heineken Hidden Stage in 2018, will be back to articulate their language in the present tense through Primavera Sound channels during the presentation tour of their recently announced new album, This Is Not a Safe Place, that will come out on August 16th and will once again be produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder. Essential pieces of this pop dream from which we don’t want to wake up.

BIG THIEF

For a normal band, debuting with a masterpiece could mean setting the bar far too high from the word go. But Big Thief is anything but a normal band. Their first album came out in 2016. It was actually called Masterpiece. This tongue in cheek title worked like a sort of liberation for them. It was as if Adrianne Lenker and her bandmates had said ”alright, we have got our masterpiece, now we can get on with things that really matter”. And they started to make records that describe people’s lives. Yours, mine, everybody’s.After Masterpiece, came Capacity and U.F.O.F. Between these two, Lenker also released her first solo album, abysskiss. In total, four timeless records that you turn to when you are at a loss. You stand before them as in front of a mirror, facing their songs, which can either comfort or break you in two depending on your mood because they are full of truths, sung for strangers called Paul, Mary, Randy, Jenni, Haley and Betsy, but also for you. And, suddenly, you everything becomes clear.With the next album which will be out October 11th, only five months after the release of U.F.O.F. and with the memory of its presentation at Primavera Sound 2019 still fresh in our minds, the straight flush of Adrianne Lenker and her Big Thief will be completed by Two Hands, the fourth album from the band that has taught us that the North American folk-rock tradition can be turned around.
Big Thief have partnered with PLUS1.org so that €1 from every ticket sold will go to support HANGARMUSIK and their orchestral music program for children in emergency and community accommodation for refugees. http://www.hangarmusik.de

BIG THIEF

For a normal band, debuting with a masterpiece could mean setting the bar far too high from the word go. But Big Thief is anything but a normal band. Their first album came out in 2016. It was actually called Masterpiece. This tongue in cheek title worked like a sort of liberation for them. It was as if Adrianne Lenker and her bandmates had said ”alright, we have got our masterpiece, now we can get on with things that really matter”. And they started to make records that describe people’s lives. Yours, mine, everybody’s.After Masterpiece, came Capacity and U.F.O.F. Between these two, Lenker also released her first solo album, abysskiss. In total, four timeless records that you turn to when you are at a loss. You stand before them as in front of a mirror, facing their songs, which can either comfort or break you in two depending on your mood because they are full of truths, sung for strangers called Paul, Mary, Randy, Jenni, Haley and Betsy, but also for you. And, suddenly, you everything becomes clear.With the next album which will be out October 11th, only five months after the release of U.F.O.F. and with the memory of its presentation at Primavera Sound 2019 still fresh in our minds, the straight flush of Adrianne Lenker and her Big Thief will be completed by Two Hands, the fourth album from the band that has taught us that the North American folk-rock tradition can be turned around.
Big Thief have partnered with PLUS1.org so that €1 from every ticket sold will go to support HANGARMUSIK and their orchestral music program for children in emergency and community accommodation for refugees. http://www.hangarmusik.de

(SANDY) ALEX G

When nobody was even talking about bedroom pop yet, Alexander Giannascoli’s room had already served as a recording studio for several albums. He would record them and, without any great ceremony, upload them on that Bandcamp profile that ended up being his own personal Boyhood. There we watched him grow from album to album, without him even knowing if anybody out there was listening. First as Alex G; then as (Sandy) Alex G the alias that this premature veteran still uses today. He has already released eight! albums during his career that started in this decade that is nearing its end: the first, Race, was released on January 1st 2010.
Afterwards, there came the almost accidental turning point in his career, starting with DSU (2014), with his signing to Domino records and not forgetting a surprising invitation from Frank Ocean to participate on the incredible Blonde. These are all valid reasons to believe that this indie-is-dead-and-buried stuff is great as long as it resuscitates every now and again to be reincarnated in characters like (Sandy) Alex G, the penultimate link in the invisible chain that could connect Elliott Smith, Jason Molina, Mark Linkous, Stephen Malkmus, Conor Oberst and Bradford Cox and, whilst we are at it, jangle guitars, country beats, psychedelic whirlpools, the gentleness of folk and a hint or two of grunge. On September 13th he will extend his own chain with the release of House of Sugar, his new album.

(SANDY) ALEX G

When nobody was even talking about bedroom pop yet, Alexander Giannascoli’s room had already served as a recording studio for several albums. He would record them and, without any great ceremony, upload them on that Bandcamp profile that ended up being his own personal Boyhood. There we watched him grow from album to album, without him even knowing if anybody out there was listening. First as Alex G; then as (Sandy) Alex G the alias that this premature veteran still uses today. He has already released eight! albums during his career that started in this decade that is nearing its end: the first, Race, was released on January 1st 2010.
Afterwards, there came the almost accidental turning point in his career, starting with DSU (2014), with his signing to Domino records and not forgetting a surprising invitation from Frank Ocean to participate on the incredible Blonde. These are all valid reasons to believe that this indie-is-dead-and-buried stuff is great as long as it resuscitates every now and again to be reincarnated in characters like (Sandy) Alex G, the penultimate link in the invisible chain that could connect Elliott Smith, Jason Molina, Mark Linkous, Stephen Malkmus, Conor Oberst and Bradford Cox and, whilst we are at it, jangle guitars, country beats, psychedelic whirlpools, the gentleness of folk and a hint or two of grunge. On September 13th he will extend his own chain with the release of House of Sugar, his new album.

ALGIERS

The quotation from Bertolt Brecht used by Algiers in 2017, when they released their second album The Underside of Power, is still valid today in 2019: if with two albums the Atlanta band has still not managed to change the world, let’s go for third time lucky. If in 2019 the planet is even more fucked up than it was in 2017, we have to keep fighting.Franklin James Fisher, Ryan Mahan, Lee Tesche and the former Bloc Party member Matt Tong are absolutely clear about that and it is in this context that they are releasing Can the Sub_Bass Speak?, audio-visual track in collaboration with the duo of producers Randall Dunn and Ben Greenberg (Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sunn O))), Uniform) that expands on their collage of free jazz, post-punk and dystopian soul with anti-racist and anti-fascist messages. It is part of the artistic web and installation thereisnoyear.com and anticipates the reactivation of Algiers’ battle and will be followed very soon by new music that will take them on a European tour with dates in Razzmatazz 3 in Barcelona (on such a unique date as February 29th) and in Café Berlín in Madrid (March 1st). In dark times, songs to light the way.

TYCHO

+ Poolside
Scott Hansen aka Tycho says in the text that accompanies the single Easy, which he released in April, that ”music can transport us to other realities”. What he doesn’t mention, because our friend Scott is a cool guy, is that not all music has that virtue and that it cannot be measured according to the charts, even if it is worth millions. Another thing he doesn’t explain, because cool guys don’t do that, is that his music does have it. With the emotional electronic music by the Californian artist that aims at both the head and the feet, made to move people both emotionally and physically, it is easy to travel from one place to another without even leaving your home. Sometimes, it takes us to places that we have already been to; and at others to destinations that we have never set foot in. Sometimes, it can even mix everything up: who says that you cannot feel nostalgia for a place that you don’t know yet, for an era that you haven’t lived? In 2006 it was made very clear to us that you can when he released Past Is Prologue, his first album, full of songs that seemed to imagine Instagram filters ages before they were even invented. Since then, over the next three albums, reality has passed through Tycho’s hands making it right on target.